Founding Engineer
Summary
As a founding engineer at Clera, you will build a graph-native memory platform for AI agents by developing core infrastructure, including query engines and distributed storage systems. You will work on-site in San Francisco, making high-level architectural decisions and contributing to research in a small, early-stage team.
About the Role
This is a founding engineer role on a small, high-conviction infrastructure team building a graph-native context and memory platform purpose-built for AI agents. You'll own significant pieces of the core — query engine, graph storage internals, distributed systems — and make architecture decisions that shape the product for years to come. This is not a feature factory; every engineer here has direct influence on the architecture, the roadmap, and the culture.
What You'll Do
Own and ship core infrastructure spanning query execution, the graph storage layer, and distributed systems.
Make architecture decisions with long-term product impact alongside the founding team.
Contribute to benchmark and research work that defines the category.
Participate in architecture reviews and navigate hard technical trade-offs with real production consequences.
Help raise the technical ceiling as the team grows.
What We're Looking For
3+ years of relevant engineering experience with strong CS fundamentals — the kind where you reason from first principles.
Proficiency in Rust or Go, with hands-on experience building distributed systems (dealbreaker).
Experience designing and shipping core infrastructure components — query engines, storage layers, or graph internals — in a production environment (dealbreaker).
Comfort owning large, ambiguous problems without a playbook and an ownership mindset that extends to design docs and architecture decisions.
Track record of shipping production systems under real load.
Nice to have: experience building or scaling databases or storage infrastructure; open-source contributions in systems-level projects; prior founding engineer or early-stage infrastructure background.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: $160,000 – $270,000 USD annually, plus meaningful equity. Learning budget, flexible PTO, and wellness perks included. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, CA, United States.
As published by ashby
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